The book of Revelation
(Greek: Apocalypse, "unveiling" or "disclosure") is the most Old
Testament-like of New Testament books. The Apocalypse is typically dismissed as
irrelevant by many, avoided by most, obsessed over by others, and the sweet
nectar for paranoid doomsdayers. John Calvin wouldn't include it in his NT
commentaries. Martin Luther was sure he lived in the last days but considered
the book of Revelation "neither apostolic nor prophetic," and relegated it to an
appendix in his New German Bible. Scholars are divided; some say its visions
were fulfilled 2000 years ago, others say they are imminent, yet others hold for
distant future fulfillments. What should we take from this extraordinary book
that closes Scripture's message?

by
Ken Westby

What do you
make of a symbol-laden book filled with visions and bizarre imagery of dragons,
other-worldly beasts, frightening evils, worldwide cataclysms, warnings of
persecution and death, mysterious numbers, reoccurring sevens, heavenly scenes
of angels singing and God speaking, and concluding with a dream-like future
world without suffering or death? Revelation is unlike any other book in the New
Testament. If the Apocalypse "unveils" or "discloses" something, what is it?

Are we to read Revelation literally, newspaper in hand,
trying to apply its imagery and terminology to current or future events? Do we
see it as descriptive prophecy of "what must soon take place" (1:1) in our
generation? Or, looking back two thousand years, do we understand it as
descriptive history of what took place among that first century generation who
received it from John?

I've been a lover of this book since I was a teenager over
fifty years ago. I've studied it seriously, have over two dozen scholarly
commentaries on Revelation, dozens of popular books and have read hundred of
articles attempting to fathom its mysteries and understand its secrets. Does
that make me an expert? No, just a student. The famous quip by Mark Twain fits
well the subject at hand:

"The researches of many
commentators have already thrown much darkness on this subject, and it is
probable that, if they continue, we shall soon know nothing at all about it!"

After hearing a sermon or reading yet another scenario on
who the beast is or the latest prediction of when the end will come, frustrated
Christians throw up their hands in agreement with Mark Twain. You can't blame
them. For many Revelation had become irrelevant or just plain foolishness.
Understandable, but tragic.

A
Book for Whackos?

Curiosity about "the end" is normal. We'd all like to have
an idea of our times and when things will wind down to the end. But if we are
told we can't know that date with any specificity, as scripture clearly does[1],
shouldn't we back away from pursuing the unknowable? Nevertheless, the desire to
know a date for "the end" seems just too attractive to simply leave it in God's
hand. Sincere pseudoprophets have ignored all warnings letting their fertile
minds run wild making predictions and setting dates. Other self-appointed
prophets saw date setting as the means to build a following with the money and
power that usually follows.

"Obsession is the appropriate word to describe some
eight million prophecy buffs today, poring over the prophecies of the Apocalypse
in Nostradamus style, anachronistically correlating current events with its
ancient cryptic warnings." So wrote C. Marvin Pate, general editor, in his
introduction to the book, Four Views on the Book of Revelation. He
continued:

Pursuing this angle, these
interpreters equate Red China with the "kings from the East" (16:12-16), the
European Common Market [EU] with the "ten horns of the beast" (13:1-10), the
mark of the beast (666) of Revelation 13 with everything from credit cards to
the Internet, and the Antichrist with a parade of prominent people, including
Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Henry Kissinger, and Mikhail Gorbachev [many now
add
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
of Iran and even president Barack Obama! to that list]. ...Such a crystal ball
reading of the last book in the Bible, however, has undoubtedly caused more harm
than good and is best avoided by responsible hermeneuticians.[2]

It seems many prophecy buffs are "Saturday night mechanics"
when it comes to interpreting the Apocalypse. Each having his or her take on its
symbols ("locusts" of 9:3-10 = Blackhawk helicopters, their "stings like
scorpions" = nuclear weapons, etc.) and creatively pounding their picture
together using what tools happen to be on the work bench. Through the centuries
to the present, nightmarish pictures have been created out of paranoia intended
to moralize people by appealing to scare tactics. Their prophecies failed, their
interpretations missed the mark. Much mischief and deceit hide in the winding
warrens of the false prophets who misuse Revelation and lure aside the innocent.
Let the traveler beware.

The Apocalypse is not a book about how terrible the
Antichrist is, nor how powerful Satan is. It is, as the very first verse says,
The Revelation of Jesus Christ given to him by Yahweh, the One True God. It is
about Christ's Lordship, our salvation, our reward, and God's wonderful plan for
our life. It tells us that evil in all its iterations will be defeated and
vanquished. It tells us that the kingdoms of this world will melt before the
Kingdom of our God, and of His Christ, and that we will reign with them forever
and ever (11:15). It encourages readers to see the real Power, supernatural
heavenly power, at work to bring us into God's presence. It counsels endurance,
patience, belief, obedience, hope, praise and worship of God, and yes,
rejoicing.

A
Book for All Seasons?

This article makes no attempt to offer a thorough
exposition or interpretation of Revelation, of its symbols, or of possible
present or future prophetical fulfillments. Such a project would require
volumes, and many have been written. Rather, I intend here but a brief
introduction to fundamental facts which can guide the reader to a more sound
approach to Revelation. An approach that I believe will yield better
understanding and allow Revelation's message to powerfully speak to us anew
today.

The Apocalypse is not fiction (certainly not science
fiction), but it is a carefully crafted piece of literature perfectly suited to
the material revealed and to the people who would first read it or hear it read.
Revelation is a book, like all NT books, addressed primarily to first-century
Christians and easily understood by them, because--and this is key--they were
thoroughly familiar with OT imagery. Once one grasps these OT idioms, Revelation
will become more understandable to us today.

But the more I study Revelation the more I understand why
it is in the canon of Scripture and why it is the perfect conclusion to what
began the Torah, the book of Genesis. It discloses heavenly secrets in visionary
form to a servant of God for the benefit of believers experiencing suffering or
perceiving themselves victimized by some form of deprivation--the first-century
recipients of John's book. But its over-all message is sufficiently universal to
apply to all Christians in all ages, which is why it found its important place
as the conclusion to the biblical canon.

One has to work at understanding Revelation since we are so
far removed from its style of presentation. It can't be read the same way one
would read the Gospels, or the narrative of Acts, or the letters of Paul. Before
one can properly interpret any piece of literature, the Bible included, one must
determine its genre or literary type. One doesn't read a romance novel with the
same expectations as reading The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, or the 2010
World Almanac, or the stock market page in the newspaper, or the comics page, or
obituary page, or the editorial page, or the weather page, or the news stories.
Each is specific to the information it presents. Each is a different literary
style suited to the information offered.

The Bible contains many a genre of literature from poetry,
to historical narrative, to prophetic, to epistolary (letters), to apocalyptic.
The most strange type to our literary experience is the last which is the
classification given Revelation[3].

In order to understand Revelation, we need to know our
Bibles backward and forward. To properly understand it we must become familiar
with the "language" or genre in which it is written. Revelation requires work.
Ignore the lazy expositors and the shoot-from-the-hip prophets who will, as Mark
Twain quipped, "throw much darkness on the subject."

The
Most OT of NT Books

Familiarity with the Old Testament is a key to
understanding Revelation. Steeped in OT imagery and terminology, which provides
the dominant source of its information, of its 404 verses 278 contain allusions
to the OT[4].
The writer (likely the Apostle John) as a Christian prophet, received and
formulated his message in the imagery of the OT, predominantly from
Daniel, and of the Synoptic Gospels, particularly the traditions of Matthew 24.

Although Revelation is completely saturated with the OT,
John did not employ a method of citations, but creatively adapted the ancient
traditions to his own purpose. The use of the OT is, therefore, prophetic in
nature and not midrashic. His focus is not on the OT text as such, but on the
prophetical reality which he depicts by means of the Hebrew Scriptures. The
writer so easily combines the OT with the apocalyptic traditions of Matthew 24,
and its parallels, which had already given the prophecies of Daniel place and
authority. By the visions from God (via Jesus and "his angel") John offered a
profound reinterpretation of the whole of OT prophecy in the light of his
understanding of Jesus Christ.[5]

It must be remembered that most first-century Christians
were infused with the OT, and many attended synagogue. Torah, the Writings, and
the Prophets saturated their minds and found their way quite naturally into
their writing and speaking. Their OT references need not come with chapter and
verse citation (which in those days were not available and books were scrolls)
as we moderns do, but flowed naturally from a mind accustomed to hearing the
scrolls read. Most did not own or read the scrolls, but heard them read in
synagogue and by traveling teachers or rabbis. Much of scripture was committed
to memory, made easier by their context in the colorful stories and pictures
given by OT writers.

John merges hundreds of OT passages into the Apocalypse
many of which are subtle allusions to little-known rituals of Israelite worship.
Revelation is very much like a worship service. John did not write a manual of
prophecy, but a heavenly worship service in progress. Revelation is a
God-centric book and the worship of God is central to everything in life. It is
the most important thing we do. Most casual readers may miss the considerable
liturgical aspects of Revelation and their implications for our worship today.

Scholars have noted the liturgical scaffolding into which
the visions of Revelation are built. Like the book of Hebrews, temple ritual and
sacrifice form the backdrop and stage for the message. We have scenes of the
throne of God surrounded by twenty-four elders. The throne reflects the altar
before which the twenty-four courses of the Hebrew Priesthood served in the
temple. There are robes, lamps, the Glassy Sea, the Cherubim, Candlestick,
Laver, offerings, prayers, incense and a Lamb that is both priest and victim, a
temple filled with God's Shekinah, fire and smoke, blood from offerings,
sprinkling blood seven times toward the veil and the pouring out of seven bowls
as a libation upon the land that had been soaked in the blood of Jesus and his
martyrs. The picture is of one great altar of burnt-and blood offerings with
Father and Son using the temple motif to mete out justice on earth.

The book of Leviticus should be required reading prior to
reading Revelation. When reading the Apocalypse's visions of God's judgment of
seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls, we can easily recall this pattern
of sevenfold judgment from Leviticus: "If after all this you will not listen to
me, I will punish you for your sins seven times over" (Lev. 26:18, 24, 28). (See
Philip Carrington's The Levitical Symbolism in Revelation[6]).

The influence of the OT on Revelation is overwhelming. The
seven-sealed scroll (5:1) should bring to mind a scroll similarly described and
in analogous context in Ezekiel. There the prophet saw for living, winged
creatures, much like those John sees (Ezek. 1:5-10; Rev. 4:6-8). Near the
creatures Ezekiel sees a crystal-like expanse and a glorious throne overarched
by a rainbow, much like that John sees. What was the point of Ezekiel's vision?
Judgment on Israel. In Revelation divine judgment is again in view and this is
why God's throne of judgment is so prominent in the book. John mentions God's
"throne" in eighteen of Revelation's twenty-two chapters. Of the sixty-two
appearances of the word "throne" in the NT, forty-seven of them are in
Revelation[7].

The idea of "souls under the altar" crying out to God (Rev.
6) is also a Hebrew, not a Christian concept. Rabbi Akiba is reputed to have
said that whoever was buried in the land of Israel was considered as if he were
buried under the altar, and if buried under the altar as if he were buried under
the throne of glory. It likely derived from the fact that the blood of a
sacrifice, which was considered the life of the victim, ran down the base of the
altar; thus the life would literally be under the altar. The martyr was seen as
representative of the people of Israel and the cry of the martyrs in 6:10 for
the Lord to render judgment reflects the appeal of Abel's blood recorded in Gen
4:10 crying out to God for justice.[8]

The
Apocalyptic Tradition

In the Hebrew Bible the book of Daniel best represents the
prophetic type of literature called apocalyptic. It was a popular literary form
from Daniel's time until about the second-century in our modern era. Dozens of
books were written in this style including such non-biblical works as the
Ethiopian Enoch, Jubilees, Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs,
the Book of the Watchers, the Astronomical Book, the Book of
Dreams, the Apocalypse of Weeks, IV Ezra, and many more. In
the Christian era dozens appeared after John's Revelation such as the
Apocalypse of Paul, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Apocalypse of
Peter, Jacobs's Ladder, Apocalypse of the Virgin Mary,
Apocalypse of James, and many more apocryphal (fictitious) apocalypses. For
centuries this was a popular literary form. The Dead Sea community at Qumran had
several apocalyptic works which were found when the Dead Sea Scrolls were
discovered in the late 1940s.

The apocalyptic style is very visual, full of colors,
creatures, sounds and sights that can cause wonder and reach one's mind and
emotions with an effect standard writing cannot match. But with its powers there
are dangers and cautions--particularly in the matter of interpretation.

Revelation is a highly figurative book that we cannot
approach with a simple straightforward literalism. Nevertheless, it strongly
represents actual historical events in John's near future, though they are set
in apocalyptic drama and clothed in poetic hyperbole. Symbolism is not a denial
of a real historical happening, but a matter of literary presentation. John is
seeing things--forty-one times he says he "sees" these events, most in
symbolic form such as the slain lamb, the seven-headed beast, and the Babylonian
prostitute. The visual nature demands symbolic interpretation, which except for
a very few instances (e.g., 1:20; 4:5; 5:6,8; 7:13-14; 12:9; 17:7-10), the
symbols are not interpreted for us.

Revelation is concrete and historical as John is writing to
seven actual churches is Asia Minor. God and John no doubt had specific persons
and geopolitical events in view throughout the book, but these were left opaque
and partly hidden by the visionary presentation. This was by divine design.
Directed by God's "unveiling," John writes to human beings to spiritually
motivate them to remain faithful, to see God's mighty hand at work, to see the
victorious work of Jesus, and to catch a spectacular scene of the Golden Age of
the coming Kingdom of God.

Reduplication

Daniel was the recipient of heavenly visions and
understanding his OT work can provide insight in understanding Revelation. One
example is Daniel's depiction of the imagery of "time, two times, and half a
time" (Dan. 7:25) in relating to great persecution and the end. This is
adapted and continued in marking Revelation's tribulation periods mentioned in
11:2 and 12:6, 14. These two sections are not set in a chronological scheme, but
depict the same prophetical sequence from different perspectives. This is an OT
pattern of reduplication or recapitulation seen in Revelation.

Daniel sets forth an initial prophetic vision of the future
which moves through a sequence of four kingdoms until the last is destroyed by
the coming of the kingdom of God (ch. 2). Chapter 7 then repeats the same
sequence, but focuses attention on the period of the fourth monarchy in the
coming of the divine rule. Again in chs. 8 and 10-11 the same pattern is
followed and interpreted from yet another perspective. In spite of an
intensification of the changing imagery the pattern of reduplication of the one
prophetic sequence is evident.[9]
The focus in Revelation seems to center upon that fourth kingdom which was it
its height of power when John wrote.

It should come as no surprise that much of Revelation's
material may not be constructed along strictly chronological lines, but by a
pattern of reduplication. The purpose is to enrich and enlarge the basic
prophetical message. The visions of Revelation include and duplicate other
apocalyptic sections of the NT (Mat. 24 and parallels; 2 Thes. 2; 2 Pet. 3).

"The basic outline is provided by Daniel with the portrayal
of the persecution of the saints, the coming of the messianic woes leading up to
the great tribulation, and the appearance of the Antichrist. The NT prophet thus
affirms the truth of the older prophecy respecting God's people. When the church
has been taxed to its uttermost limit, the kingdom of God is ushered in with the
coming of the Son of Man. However, this basic apocalyptic scheme of the NT has
been enlarged and developed by imagery from other parts of the OT. Psalm 2
provided the standard imagery for the rebellious nations (Rev. 2:26), Joel 2 for
the cosmic disorders (Mat. 24:29f.; Rev. 6:12), and Isa. 66 for the hope of the
new heavens and earth (Rev. 21:1)."[10]

Is it not logical that there would be great similarity in
Daniel and other OT material and Revelation given the fact Yahweh stands as
source behind all the visions and judgments? Same God, same plan, same ultimate
outcome. But time moves on and circumstances on the ground change and so from
time to time God provides fresh insights, portrayals, and encouragement to His
Saints. And what makes Revelation so very special is the powerful presence of
the Son of Man, Jesus Messiah, recently exalted, glorified, and now sharing
God's throne in the Great Vision.

Discover
the Rich Jewel

The Apocalypse "revealed" to Christians of the
first-century things which must "shortly come to pass." It was "Apocalypse Now"
for the saints standing on the edge of disaster as that fourth kingdom in
Daniel's vision was spewing forth its evil. It was a call to endure and to know
that the ultimate victory was to be God's and theirs. Secondarily, it was also
"Apocalypse Later" as evil would continue to manifest in the centuries following
until God and Christ bring an end to the Devil's rule and replace the kingdoms
of this world. This is the prophetic element to the book. The resurrection of
the saints and the return of Christ finally bring the Apocalypse to its climatic
end.

Revelation presents unseen realities of God's heaven and
his activities on earth in bringing ultimate victory to the Kingdom of God. It
helps us see the dimension of reality from the perspective of God's heaven.
Eternity is not timeless, but unfolds in stages that humans will live through.
Evil will be crushed. Death replaced with life. The righteous vindicated and
rewarded. The scales of justice finally balanced. "The revelation of Jesus
Christ, which God gave him to show his servants" gives tender guidance to the
faithful to endure to the end. It offers divine help to endure trials and
imparts hope of eternal life in the sparkling paradise of God's new heaven and
earth.

The Apocalypse is a stunning, many faceted jewel. Expose it
to light and watch it coruscate with a rainbow of flashing colors. Its message
for the Godly is clear. Its visions brilliant, scary, reassuring, and leading to
an end that echoes Jesus' model prayer: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on
earth as it is in heaven."

I recommend the advice of William Tyndale, a true hero of
the Faith, and suggest it be applied to this most beautiful and final book of
God's Word.

Though a man had a precious
and rich jewel, yet if he knew not the value thereof, nor wherefore it
served, he were neither the better nor richer of a straw. Even so though we read
the scripture, and babble of it ever so much, yet if we know not the use
of it, and wherefore it was given, and what is therin to be sought, it
profits us nothing at all.

It is not enough, therefore, to
read and talk of it only, but we must also desire God, day and
night, instantly, to open our eyes, and to make us understand and
feel wherefore the scripture was given, that we may apply the medicine of
the scripture, every man to his own sores. unless we
intend to be idle disputers, and brawlers about vain words, ever gnawing upon
the bitter bark without, and never attaining unto the sweet pith within; and
persecuting one another in defending of wicked imaginations, and phantasies of
our own invention.

--William Tyndale;
prefixed to the translation of the Pentateuch, 1530.

[emphasis mine]

The doors of God's heaven are open to us (Rev. 4:1). Let
the visions of Revelation (a picture is truly worth a thousand words) stir our
souls to praise, "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty," and to action by
overcoming all temptations to stand at the final triumph of God.